


Man in the Mirror

by Name1



Series: When Cara wore the helmet-various scenarios [2]
Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Body Swap, Cara in the helmet, F/M, What Can I Say?, Yes I know, the kid likes cookies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:15:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25338220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Name1/pseuds/Name1
Summary: It’s still a little unsettling when she hears him speak in her voice from her body. “Actually, now that I think about it,” he says, “maybe you should look before we get switched back. This is the only chance I might get for you to see me.”She shakes her head so hard the helmet moves with her jostling but Din cuts her off in her voice. “Hear me out,” Din says. “The Creed says no other living thing can see me without the helmet on, but you’re me right now. It would just be me seeing myself. Do you get it?”ORThe kid gets up to mischief and they end up in each other's bodies.
Relationships: Baby Yoda (The Mandalorian TV) & Cara Dune & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV), Cara Dune & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV), Cara Dune/The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)
Series: When Cara wore the helmet-various scenarios [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1834258
Comments: 26
Kudos: 87





	Man in the Mirror

**Author's Note:**

> Here's a body swap fic that no one asked for but once it got stuck in my head I had to get it out of my system.  
> Thanks to Cooper’s_Austringer for planting the idea.
> 
> It's weird, I know, but that's kind the point :D

Today had been a hard day. Muscles were sore, ligaments were pulled, and bruises were just beginning to bloom on their skin along the many points of impact.

Cara’s blaster chose precisely the wrong moment to jam in their up-close and personal battle with half a dozen special trained stormtroopers (those who actually knew how to aim and hit a target more often than not), but Din’s second of panic at the telltale sound of a jammed firing mechanism didn't give her a moment's pause.

He turned away from his own target to give her some cover for to get away, but instead she ran straight at the other guy, surprising the hell out of him. ‘ _Who runs at a stormtrooper with no weapon_?’ Din asked himself exasperatedly. _Cara does_ apparently, and Din watched as she turned the blaster around, using the butt of the gun to beat the guy straight into the dirt where she made quick work of him.

Din picked off the rest of them before Cara could throw herself bodily at them in a ground tussle. She was strong--no matter how many times he saw her take down an opponent it still amazed him. She might not be taller, but she used every ounce of her weight and muscle to gain the upper hand. He almost felt bad for the troopers.

He never thought of himself as a coward, but his first thought would have been to regroup and get another weapon; _not charge them head first_ , but her manual application of force worked surprisingly well.

An hour later found them sitting side by side back on board the Crest, where they practically slid down the wall in exhaustion as they balanced the kid in between them. His wrinkly brow was even more wrinkled than normal and he looked less than impressed with the bruises on their arms or Cara's split lip and eyebrow.

“I need a shower. This’ll be day three without one,” she complained, as she adjusted against the wall and it pulled on her cuts and bruises. The amount of blood on her clothes wasn’t worth worrying over but Din and the kid seemed concerned where she just felt gross and sticky.

“Yeah me too,” Din agreed. He knew better than to draw attention to her injuries, so he just focused on his own. The combined smell of sweat and blood on both of them was none too fresh.

“I have to give it to you. I don't know how you can take down people like that. Sparring with you is one thing, but in a real knock-down drag-out fight, you’re a force to be reckoned with. I wish I knew how you did it.”

“Yeah, well, you're not so bad yourself” she admitted. She still didn’t like receiving a compliment, but she was getting more used to it. Bean was sitting on their legs and was watching them intently; his little head snapping back and forth like he was invested in their conversation. They often wondered how much he actually understood. “I wish I knew how you fought in that helmet,” she admitted, continuing the conversation. “It's got to be hard to turn your head in that thing....not to mention aiming a blaster. Your center has to be all messed up lining up a target.”

“You get used to it,” he explained. He was oddly chatty about the helmet these days. Once he knew she wasn’t making fun of him, _just genuinely curious_ , he opened up much more. The last few months working and traveling together had been very interesting.

“And you have the added advantage that no one can see your face, so they don’t know what you’re thinking--what’s going on in your head.

Din chuckled. “Your face is clear for everyone to see but most time I have no clue what’s going in your head either. I wish I knew what you were thinking when you ran at them.”

The kid’s ears raised and looked between them again before turning around to get a better look at them to listen more closely.

She laughs. “My mind is a wonderful and mysterious place, Din.”

“Terrifying, more like…..” he says, and it earns him a shoulder shoved playfully against his.

“Admit it,” she teased, “you’d love to be in my head, to know what it’s like to be me.”

“I admit nothing, but if I WAS you, I wouldn’t give the kids cookies in bed all the time, that’s for sure. At the word ‘ _cookies_ ’ the kid’s ears perked up even more. They had inadvertently gotten his attention whether they meant to or not.

“I’d like to see you try and resist that cute face,” she challenges him. “If you were me, and you got him all cuddly against your chest, you couldn’t possibly tell him ‘no’’’.

“I would so tell him ‘ _no_ ,’ he insists, knowing he’s lying through his teeth as he spoils the kid just as much as she does. “You’re just a pushover,” he tells her, shoving playfully back against her shoulder. “I might admit I’m kind of jealous how he snuggles up to sleep on your chest though.” He watched sometimes in envy as Cara rubbed her soft cheek against his green fuzzy head. He held Bean plenty, but his cheeks were always covered in steel. He often wondered what it would be like to feel the fuzzy hairs on the kid’s head against his face like she got to feel. There were times when even to Din, the man in the mirror who looked back at him appeared cold under that Beskar covering—not exactly fatherly material. He didn’t know how Cara and the kid saw past it, but they always seemed to see more in him than he thought was possible.

He had to admit that kid was so snuggly when he was going to sleep…..or especially when he wanted something--usually from Cara--since she was the softer of the two and provided a better sleeping surface to snuggle into. He slept in Din’s arms and he would always the be go-to for comfort and security, but he never slept on his chest. “I wish I knew what it felt like to cuddle him like you do.” The kid looked up at him with his big dark eyes and blinked knowingly at him, chirping in agreement. _He wondered too._

Cara could tell Din wasn’t joking from the wistful tone of his voice so she was serious for once. “Me too,” she says softly, as her eyes shut. “That little gremlin may or may not have me wrapped around his little finger when he does it.”

Din ran his hand over Bean’s head affectionately as he thought of what it would be like to hold him against his face without a layer of steel between them. He tries to lighten the mood when he feels it’s gotten too heavy. “He’d definitely get more cookie sticks in bed from me, that’s for sure……”

At that, Din felt the kid perk up. He shifted from where he was perched between them in the valley where their thighs touched into a standing position and reached up toward their faces. Din didn’t feel sleepy, but all the sudden he feels himself drifting off. The last thing he remembers is the feeling of Cara slumping heavily beside him.

………………………..

Cara wakes up but she instantly knows something’s off. She remembers Din sitting to her left but she feels his warm presence against her right side. ‘ _That’s weird_ ,’ she thinks, ‘ _he must have gotten up and switched sides when I dozed off_.’

The room is darker than she remembers it being but light filters in through a strip of tinted material in front of her eyes. Her face— _no, her whole head_ \-- feels like it's covered by something…..

She reaches up to touch her face to rub the sleep out of her eyes, but her hands are met with cold steel conforming to the slopes of her cheeks. _She would know that shape anywhere._ There are small blinking lights close to her face near her chin and the feel of air flowing over her face is probably the only think keeping her from hyperventilating as her mind starts spinning. She knows what’s on her face, but how…..?

She looked down and noticed she was also wearing different clothes than she remembers earlier—Din’s clothes. She raises her hands to look at them and they’re decidedly not her own. The size, the color, the hair across the backs of them, gives her a sinking feeling—she knows those hands. This has got to be a dream.

“…….Din…..?” she asks aloud with an edge of panic in her voice, hoping he’ll have a reasonable explanation for this. _Maybe she’s still asleep……_

Din wakes up at the sound of his name. He knew he fell asleep with Cara to his right, but he feels the warmth of a body against his left side from ankle to shoulder. He looks across expecting to see Cara looking back at him but jolts violently when he sees “himself” looking back instead. He shakes his head to clear it, but the image doesn’t magically clear up like he was expecting. He’s looking at a perfect image of himself—his trusty helmet staring back at him like it does every morning in the mirror as he starts the day. He reaches up to his face for the familiar presence of his own helmet but is met with a soft face and lose hair on one side, barely touching his shoulder. His hands trail down his neck hesitantly, but it’s not until he reaches down his chest and is met with soft womanly curves that he starts to realize something is terribly wrong. He gets a good look at the hands that he’s pulled back from their venture and knows instantly they’re Cara’s—he’d know them anywhere--down to the pattern of the freckles and the small scar on the outside of her thumb.

“Uhhh…..Cara?” he asks uncertainly, “....what's going on?” His voice sounds like hers as it comes out of her mouth.. _What in the fuck is going on?_

Cara looks to her right and sees her face staring back at her, clearly freaked out. The voice is hers, but the tone and the subtle accent is all …… _Din’s_.

“Din? Is that you?” she asks, as she looks at her own body in front of her. “Why are you ……. _me_?” she says, after a long pause trying to come up with the right word. She usually never fails at words like this, but she has no words to explain this or even describe it accurately. There’s no frame of reference for whatever _this_ is.

They hear a chirp from between them and look down to the clearly pleased and proud face of Bean still perched on their thighs.

Something clicked in her mind at the victorious look on his little face. She speaks, but Din’s deep voice comes out. “Is this you?” she asks the kid in her lap.

She repeats the question though it’s still Din’s deeper voice she hears come out of her mouth and it throws her. “Did you do this?” she asks Bean, as she tries really hard not to make it sound like an accusation and just a question.

Din jumps to his boy’s defense. “Maybe it wasn't him…” he says.

Cara looks at him incredulously, but knows he can’t see it with the helmet covering the expression. “Oh, I’m sorry, do you happen to have any other force-sensitive children hidden in the ship who are powerful enough to swap consciousnesses between people?” she asks, clearly agitated with Din and his nonchalance. “….I didn't think so.”

“Don’t be mad at him,” Din says, in Cara’s voice. “I’m sure it was an accident.”

“I’m too shocked to be mad,” Cara says, to defend her line of questioning, “but if this is something he did on purpose maybe he can undo it.” She’s careful to keep her words soft so as not to spook him. He _was_ just a baby after all…he probably didn’t know what he was doing.

Bean doesn’t seem to understand what all the fuss is about. He doesn’t look worried at all, just looks up at them with an innocent expression. Din adjusts the kid so he’s equidistant between the two of them before asking in Cara’s voice, “which one is Din?”

The kid doesn’t hesitate for a second, before he reaches up to Cara’s feminine face somehow housing Din temporarily.

“Was this really you?” Din asks in wonder. Bean doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t have to-- He sits back against them, looking even more pleased with himself than before.

Cara has to admit, “It's pretty amazing. I'll give you that.” The fact that it was Din’s deeper voice that spoke as her brain signaled his lips to talk was getting less weird the more she felt it happen. She wondered just how many other untapped talents the kid had and exactly what kind of power he was capable of wielding.

They waited for hours for Bean to change them back, but he seemed to be in no hurry. By nightfall, they had re-done all the inventory and made dinner trying to keep their minds off their ‘dilemma’ that wasn’t disappearing anytime soon. There were only a few mishaps as Cara had to adjust to controlling Din’s larger hands and taller lankier body.

“Okay, it’s been hours. This body really needs to take a shower,” Cara says from Din’s lips as she catches another whiff of his sweaty body she now finds herself inhabiting.

“Okay,” Din agrees, “but make sure you don’t look in the mirror.”

“Of course, I won’t look!” she says, more than a little offended he would even think her capable of betraying his trust like that. “I know it’s YOUR face under here.”

She expected Din to snap back at her with both of their fuses understandably short from the unprecedented level of weirdness they’re swimming in, but he’s quiet as he ponders something.

When he speaks, it’s obvious he’s come to a conclusion but still wants to talk it out aloud. It’s still a little unsettling when she hears him speak in her voice from her body. “Actually, now that I think about it,” he says, “maybe you _should_ look before we get switched back. This is the only chance I might get for you to see me.”

She shakes her head so hard the helmet moves with her jostling but Din cuts her off in her voice. “Hear me out,” Din says. “The Creed says no other living thing can see me without the helmet on, but you’re _me_ right now. It would just be me seeing myself. Do you get it?”

“Are you kidding me?” he hears her cry out in his voice. “That's cheating!” she says, outraged he would even suggest something like that. “You can't show your face to another living being. I’m still another _living being_ , doofus!” He's being playing loose with the rules lately and it had her on edge. He seems to be questioning the strictness of his beliefs, but she knows she can be strong even when he wavers. 

“It’s not cheating, Cara,” he says, though it’s beyond strange to be saying those words to his own body and adorning helmet. He’s talking to himself though he knows she’s in there. “I would be looking with my own eyes.”

She’s not budging. “But I'm behind your eyes, you idiot! That can't possibly fall under the category of looking at yourself. I would know what you look like even if it wasn't my eyes that saw you....”

Din tries to convince her this one chance is worth the risk. “You might forget when we get back to normal,” he suggests, as one possibility that might give them an out, but Cara’s having none of it. “But what if I _don't_? I'm not risking that.”

Din’s surprised at her vehemence not to see him. “You really don't want to catch a glimpse?”

“No! What kind of person do you think I am?” She was offended that he still thought for even a second after all this time they've known each other that he still had to ask. He seems off put that she won’t take his suggestion of a loophole to see him.

“Look,” Cara explains, “one day when you retire or whatever your people call it and you decide to give up this way of life and take it off, I'll fight for a place in line, but not until then.”

“You won't have to get in line,” he tells her seriously, “you'll be the first.”

She smiles but she knows Din can’t see it with ‘her’ face covered by the helmet. She suddenly wonders how many times he’s thought the same thing. How many times has he laughed or cried and known that she couldn’t see it? She’s gotten so good at reading him over the past few months, but the thought that she might have missed even one smile makes her feel sad for some reason. Seeing Din expressing himself through her face now gives her a hint of what he must look like. Her eyes are so much more expressive when he’s behind them and she sees her face smiling more under his power than it ever smiles under hers. ‘ _He must smile a lot and have really expressive eyes_ ,’ she thinks fondly. She wasn’t kidding--one day she’d love to see him when he decided to give up the helmet, but not a day before.

“I really need to bathe,” she says, getting back to the matter at hand. “I understand if you don’t trust me not to look at your face. You can stand there and watch to make sure. I’m in _your_ body so it’s nothing you haven’t seen a thousand times.”

“I trust you, go ahead” he assures her. “I’ll take one after you’re done.”

His body, with her in it calling the shots, turns to the fresher, but a problem suddenly comes to mind.

“Wait,” he says as he stops her from going to the shower. “How will I be able to undress and wash without seeing _your body_?” He would be taking of her clothes and washing her body as though it was his own. _Could he shower in the dark? How would that work?_

She gets his dilemma and it makes her smile under the Beskar. “Din, I appreciate your sense of modesty, but you’ve seen me naked, you know,” she says, more than a little amused at his reluctance to look down and see her nude without her permission.

“No, I've seen you _hypothermic_ and you were more ice than skin then,” he argues. “Getting you out of those wet clothes so you didn’t die was my priority, not ogling you at my leisure.” 

“If you ogle me in the shower, I'll never know it,” she says to reassure him, but it doesn’t work.

“But I will,” he insists. “I won’t do something that will put you in a compromising position, even if _you’re_ me and _I’m_ you at the moment. We should just avoid the shower for now.”

“No way,” she says, “I'm disgusting (gesturing to the male body she’s in) and _my_ body is disgusting” (gesturing to her feminine body Din was in). “The kid seems pretty pleased with himself, so who knows how long we'll be like this. There's blood and sweat dried everywhere.” 

“I’m not sure exactly how to do that without touching you and seeing you,” Din admits in her voice.

Cara’s had enough with logic games. She needs to bathe _now_. “Look, I think we can both agree this is the weirdest thing that has ever happened. We're trying to make it less weird, but this is some batshit craziness right here. Let's just go with the crazy. We’ll shower together.”

“Uhhhh, is that a good idea,” Din asks uncertainly, unclear how this solves his problem, but Cara’s got it all figured out.

“We’ll wash each other,” she explains simply. “It’ll be us just reaching across with the soap to our familiar body instead of reaching down to the foreign one. We'll just chalk everything up to this weird-ass day. What happens in the shower stays in the shower. Deal?”

Din knows when he’s lost. “Okay. Deal.”

They strip down with further preamble and enter the shower.

…………………

Din doesn’t know how he gets himself into these weird scenarios of adopting green fuzzy sons or showering with Cara while in her body, but he’s just lucky he guesses. Months from now, when he remembers their joint shower they don’t talk about, he just remembers bits and pieces since he was so focused on not looking down at ‘himself’ so as not to catch a glimpse of breasts or anything lower. _Hands were safe—he could look down at her hands._

Cara decided to keep the helmet on, since the lines were fuzzy if it would be okay for Din to see his own face while in her body. Technically, that would have been another set of eyes seeing him (though _his_ mind forming the memory), so she felt it was safer to leave it on and they lowered the shower spray to accommodate. _It was all so confusing--they would just err on the side of caution. This was the craziest thing she’s ever done—bar none._

Cara’s reaching across the narrow space to wash her own womanly body, but she's oddly distracted by the fact that it's _his_ hands that she sees moving in response to her thoughts.

She’s seen her own naked body every day of her life and washed it almost as many times but it’s so different seeing herself like this across the shower. She lathers up his hands and goes about washing her body standing across from her. She’s oddly aroused by watching Din’s hands rubbing soap over her chest and down her stomach. It’s like a movie—watching as a third party. She memorizes the way his large hands cup the slippery skin of her breasts covered in soap as she swipes his thumbs over her nipples and watches as her body (with Din along for the ride) jumps at the intense sensation.

Inside _her_ body, Din is shocked by how it feels to have his hands touch her breasts. He had no idea her nipples were that sensitive. He looked down just enough to watch his hands reaching toward him, touching and washing her naked flesh, and fights off a stab of arousal as the image that’s burned into his mind. When he closes his eyes, he’ll always see his hands covered in soap as they travel across her breasts and down her belly as he feels what it’s like from her point of view.

It's almost a bit voyeuristic. It feels forbidden to feel turned on in her body by seeing his hands touching her; he can’t believe he's feeling her body responding to the touch of his hands. It feels almost like they're both watching from the outside as their bodies touch each other’s. 

Din looks across and sees the very obvious evidence of his body getting aroused, with Cara at the helm, and is surprised she’s getting turned by this too.

He reaches out with her hands to wash his own body-- the everyday planes of his flat chest and stomach, but he’s distracted as he sees her hands following his commands. Watching her hands tracing down his chest is turning him on, but it feels weird in her body. ‘ _Is this what a flare of arousal feels like for her?’ he wonders._ He feels pleasure pooling warm in her abdomen and feels the urge to shift as the feeling between her legs gets too overwhelming to ignore much longer. 

Luckily, Cara’s all business as she moves this along. Cara reaches out across the shower with his hands to wash between her legs and watches as her own face contorts with pleasure and Din hisses with how good it feels. She tries to ignore how turned on he must be as she feels how easily his fingers under her guidance glide through her own endless wetness as she quickly soaps up and washes herself off. She’s so wet though, it’s taking forever to wash it all away and she lingers longer than she planned on. Watching Din’s fingers disappear between her legs is too much of a visual for her as well, and Cara has to close Din’s eyes behind the helmet. She’s already visibly turned on enough as it is. Being a man really sucked….there was no hiding _that_.

When it’s Din’s turn, he washes himself as business-like as he can with her fingers but he hears his own voice moan from under the helmet and knows that inside it, Cara’s feeling pleasure that’s just as foreign but clearly as powerful as what he just felt. He can see he’s hard, so he knows she's struggling with not finding this pleasurable as well. He quickly reaches out to wash his own rigid length with her soapy hand as fast as he can, but the image of her fingers wrapped around him will stick with him for years—he’s sure of it.

They dry off, decidedly not discussing how arousing they found the experience in each other’s bodies. She had said it herself. _What happens in the shower stays in the shower._

They can’t sleep but their attempt at sparring to pass the time goes poorly from the get go. Cara tries using Din’s hands to help braid her own hair out of her face for Din’s convenience, but his fingers are just too large for her to have the dexterity required, so she gives up.

“This thing is heavy. It's hard to see,” Cara complains, as they fall to the mat--the presence of the helmet making her lose over and over as she’s constantly pulling punches to keep her arm free to tug it down--aware of keeping it on at all costs. It’s such a distraction to worry about your face always being covered.

“You get used to it,” Din says helpfully, but he’s not doing much better in her body. She’s shorter than he is and sports thicker hips and thighs, which ends up in Din steering her into things accidentally or dinging her hips into the corners of the tables. Her poor body will have several additional bruises tomorrow.

The stress and overall weirdness catch up with them and they finally lay down to sleep with the kid in Din’s bunk. Cara settles in for a long night of sleeping with the helmet on as she watches Bean crawl up the ample chest of her body Din is body-siting for her. The kid nestles against her breasts and his fuzzy ears lay flat as he gets comfortable. Cara watches in wonder through Din's eyes, as her own face reaches down to nuzzle the top of Bean’s head before laying her cheek against him and realizes this is the first time Din has ever done this. She doesn’t care if it took him borrowing her body for a few hours if it meant he got to cuddle with the kid like this--it was worth it. She watched from inside the helmet with a warm feeling in her chest at the picture of them touching their faces together. She lets out a snort as the kid then reaches toward the cookie sticks on the end table and Din indulgently gives him a couple. It turns out she’s not the only pushover…

As soon as she hears the munching sounds dissipate and the kid lets out a content and full sound, she feels suddenly tired and the last thing she remembers is watching as both her body and Din’s slump against each other and thinking to herself, ‘did that little cute shit really do all of this just to cuddle his dad and get his hands on some cooki—'

………………………….

They wake up in the morning back to normal and they both breathe a sigh of relief. They refuse to talk about that weird day in the weeks and months to come, but it was almost an unwritten rule that they gave the kid cookie sticks pretty much whenever he asked for them from then on. It was better to be safe than sorry.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading. Drop me a note if you enjoyed the weirdness along with me :)
> 
> Next up will be the AU continuation, but with work how it is, it will take some time.  
> until then......


End file.
